Talent Acquisition- a point of view

“A baby has brains, but it doesn’t know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.”
- L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

My adventure with EverythingMe started two years ago. I came here as a recruiter, with a shared belief in the founders’ philosophy of building a fantastic core of engineering. That was the first milestone on our way as a team on the yellow brick road.

From the night I rolled out of bed with a seed of an idea that I couldn’t wait to tell Rami about, which became Doit9, DoAT and finally EverythingMe, until the long night a few weeks ago when I took the final decision to move on, it was one hell of an amazing roller coaster ride.

I’m proud to have given it everything. And then some more.

Hard not to get sentimental about the great times and the journey I’ve had, so I want this goodbye post to be about Thank You’s.

The list starts with the obvious thank you’s to my co-founders Rami & Joey. Thank you to the investors, partners, the board, the management, and the entire EverythingMe team. From the small group that created our first search engine, through our transition to mobile, and all the way to becoming the pioneers and leaders of Contextual mobile, and with a special thanks to Nina for taking care of my crazy and ever-changing global adventures.

“The ball is an essential part of the game.” - Johan Cruyff“The game is an essential part of life.” – Me
It was the 26th of May, 1999. The venue was Barcelona, Spain and the occasion was the UEFA Champion’s League Final between Bayern Munich and Manchester United.
Munich took an early lead after 6 minutes and the game was destined to live up to the cliché that football is played over 90 minutes, after which the Germans would win 1-0.

90 minutes of football passed and the game entered extra time. People were already leaving the stadium. Within the space of 4 minutes of extra time, in the most dramatic turn of events, Man United scored two remarkable goals and were ultimately crowned the champions of Europe.

The entire team here at EverythingMe is excited to announce that our contextual Android launcher is now available worldwide.
As TechCrunch wrote:

EverythingMe‘s contextual launcher aims to customize your Android home screen so that you get exactly what you need every time you switch on your phone. It’s the results of years of work on mobile discovery. And today, the app is available globally.

This is an important milestone for us but we’re already working hard to make EverythingMe even better, so expect to see great new features coming soon.

And remember, EverythingMe is completely free to download, feel free to share with friends and family!

For me, an awesome human capital is the most basic ingredient for a company who wants to create a masterpiece product, much like an artist creating his lifetime exhibition.

1. GROOVE IS IN THE HEARTIt’s one thing to throw around buzzwords like Agile and GTD, and a completely different thing to be able to create a work environment that actually promotes it. When in doubt, look for the triple Cs to guide you: Change, Communication, Creativity — eliminate bureaucracy to keep everyone open for change, encourage informal communications, and watch your company’s creativity-meter skyrocket.

“A contextual product understands the full story around a human experience, in order to bring users exactly what they want, with minimal interaction. Context done right feels like your device finally gets you.”

Thoughts about contextual mobile product design shared on The Next Web by EverythingMe co-founder and CMO, Ami Ben David: http://tnw.co/1k7zaNf

Looking around me I see a disproportionate percentage of musicians at EverythingMe, so I stopped and asked myself — Why musicians? Why so many?

* The writer of this post is a musician, music plays a lead role in her life, so she might be a little biased.

Visionaries

Music = Art = Creativity. I don’t need to explain this, right? In art, you create something out of nothing, so you think of the end result right from the first note. It takes inspiration and hard work. Have you ever seen the film Amadeus? Remember the part where he writes Confutatis? An entire partitur straight out of his head to the paper. While not all of us are Mozarts, we do share in the vision of something new.

The world is going contextual, there’s no doubt about it. Google Glass, mailbe.at and Aether Cone are just a few examples of how technology is now focused on delivering content based on our interests, habits, time and surroundings. Our very own EverythingMe Launcher actually turns your Android into a phone that delivers apps, people and information you need, right when you need them, every time you pick it up. Months ago, we decided that it’s time to align our visual branding and messaging to our product. The world of visual branding, however, has its own rules and prejudices in the form of do’s and don’ts for designers. This challenge led us on an exciting journey of creating a truly contextual brand identity for our launcher.